The premise of
Haunted Child is simple. A man has
left his wife and child without saying anything to them only to return having
been initiated into what appears to be a sinister and predatory esoteric
culture in West London. His intentions for his family and how his estranged
wife and child cope with his return and changed self are not smooth and honest
and create a great deal of tension and drama.
This play marks Penhall’s return to
theatre and the Royal Court. His first major play, Some Voices, premiered at the Royal Court back in 1994 and since
then he has written successfully for both stage and screen, most notably with Blue/Orange, The Road and the screen
adaptation of Enduring Love.
Penhall is very skilled at making us feel
the tension before us and both Okonedo and Daniels both produce spirited and
touching performances. You genuinely feel like you’re bashing your head against
a brick wall trying to reach past the indoctrination that Douglas has suffered
from. The talent of Daniels is at the fore, you really do believe that some
spiritual force has compelled him and I, at least, wanted to sit him down and
talk sense in to him as much as Okonedo was trying to do on stage. His
characterization of the less sane elements of the esoteria was both funny and
deeply worrying at the same time and I felt sincere fear for the son as he was
innocently wanting to follow his dad into whatever pit he was falling into.
Okonedo deserves equal praise for her
role as the distressed wife. Trying to battle against the nonsense her husband
is sprouting while trying to protect her petulant son from being exposed to it
isn’t only difficult in reality but also very difficult to balance on stage.
She does a great job, fixing herself as an anchor of sense and sensibility
while at no point feeling totally secure in herself. Although she suffered more
from line slips than the others, she had a lot more to cope with and dealt with
it all very well indeed.
The acting throughout was of a very high
standard. Near the beginning there were a couple of line slips that could
properly be put down to the fact that it’s still in the early stages of the run
and once the actors gain more confidence the beginning should pick up fine. I
was impressed with Jude Campbell as the son, Thomas. He was not just a child
doing as he had been told and walking here and saying this or that, he was a
fully-formed and realistic character and this is a real achievement.
At no point, however, did I feel like the
young boy caught in the middle of this adult struggle was the main character. The
hauntedness of the drama is dispelled very early on and the macabre nature of
his mind is only hinted at through a painting and one or two conversations
about death and dying. There could, and should, have been more exploration
here. The title being Haunted Child
leads you to expect more from the character of the child and the phenomenon of
being haunted and this just doesn’t come through in the script and I think
there was room for it.
The play is quite short and never really
digs its teeth into the philosophical and practical aspects of this ‘esoteric
philosophy’ that has so utterly taken over this vulnerable character. Every
time the script approaches some genuine philosophical challenge, some
intellectual point that appears to have the esoteric maniac fumbled Penhall
resorts to making him look like a fool with some sort of physical gag (and I’m
not saying a bucket on the head or a Jackie Chan impression aren’t funny); I
would have liked to have more substance, more debate in this piece. I wanted
more friction and was expecting a more difficult fight that never really
materialized.
I found the play to be confused. As I was
thinking to myself about Douglas’ esoteric group, ‘if he has to forego all attachments
to join the group, why has he come back to his family now?’ he almost answered
my question by shouting at his wife and saying that he essentially came back to
take their son with him and to sell the house to pay for his initiation. This,
however, is still an attachment and attachment to other members of the group
would also count, surely. The play never addresses these questions and needed
to take a more direct approach and launch a full broadside on this particular
brand of bullshit. Perhaps the best way to explore an issue in an intelligent way is to use intelligent characters and on this count, Penhall simply falls short. Although the characters are formed, emotional and often rational they are never intelligent, much less have an intelligent discussion. The result is that they leave the play somewhat void of intelligence in itself.
The craft on the stage was fine; the
acting was of a high standard and the set was complete, functional and
impressive in its subtlety and how much it felt like a home and not simply a
house. However, the script was a few noticeable rungs short and could have explored deeper themes and questions further and given the
audience more to leave with than just a somewhat weak plot. What could have been an interesting exploration of conviction and belief seemed to lack either element.
Written by Joe Penhall; Directed by Jeremy Herrin; At the Royal Court; Starring Sophie Okonedo, Ben Daniels, Jack Boulter, Jude Campbell; Runs from 2 December 11 - 14 January 12.
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